


True Love

by MMonster



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Baby, Death, Gen, Minor Violence, Platonic Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-13
Updated: 2014-11-18
Packaged: 2018-02-25 05:18:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2609909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MMonster/pseuds/MMonster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Queen's soldiers are able to stop Charming from saving little Princess Emma. Regina arrives just as Snow cries over her husband's body... and the Queen meets the Princess for the first time. Her new daughter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Queen

The Queen purposefully stepped over her soldiers unmoving bodies, uninterested in knowing if they were alive or dead, and strode deliberately towards the nursery where she could only faintly hear Snow White's cries over the blowing wind of the Curse approaching.

 

Snow clutched her husband's tainted white shirt in her hands, paths of humidity being made over her fair features by tears which refused to abate. Blood red lips opened and wailed a torturous cry over her dead love. James had been unable to save little princess Emma. Unable to save himself. And as the newborn baby fidgeted in the dead arms of its father, only a couple of paces away from the object which could save it and an entire kingdom from eternal misery, its mother screamed the agony of losing True Love.

 

The loyal and brave soldiers responsible for such a positive outcome for the Queen lay in various states of pain and mangling, a couple of them already gone. Mercifully, the Queen called forth her magic and put an end to her reliable aides agony, with a flick of her wrist they all feel, motionless chests and glassy eyes, into the sweet and cold hands of death. One look around the room she was sure would be the container of innumerable moments of joy during the True Love's child growth if not for her interference, and the Queen set herself on her objective.

 

The woman she hated with such intensity, for so long, finally, defeated. Her heart-wrenching wails of pure and unadulterated pain were like a balm for the Queen's ears. She wasn't able to save her husband, to save her daughter, and wouldn't be able to save herself. Like all powerful magic, the one from the wardrobe was very specific, stopping Snow from being able to use it if not in its perfect condition. With one of its door smashed from its hinges, the wardrobe was useless.

 

Little Emma made herself known by letting out a bothered cry, getting her mother's attention over the unbearable pain the woman was going through. With shaky fingers, Snow took her daughter from its father's limp arms, and hushed it with gentle humming, hot tears of lost and mourning falling over the infant.

 

"Such a sweet scene" the Queen mocked, unsparing.  "Father, mother and daughter, together in damnation. I would say death, but killing you, Snow White, would be so unsatisfactory. After everything, the least I can do is to make you endure the lost of all you hold dear, while I cherish your suffering and reign over your people. The only happy ending mine" the Queen smiled in twisted pleasure, the perfection of the moment, of her victory, consuming her into the most glorious of the awards.

 

Snow, helpless, continued to cry, refusing to look to the Queen's sick smile and give her the satisfaction of seeing her broken soul through her eyes. The baby started to mewl when its mother's clutching grip became too tight, and Snow relinquished it immediately. The Queen laughed at the despair of the scene, the irony of it.

 

"Now, let's not make this more arduous than it needs to be" She smiled beatifically, white straight teeth displayed in wickedness. Snow chanced a look, and at the expression of the older woman she knew what was about to happen would be atrocious. She squeezed her baby, her last precious thing, to her chest, ignoring its cries of discomfort at the unfaltering grip "Come on, Snow, you're hurting your child! Don't you know the tighter you hold on to someone, the most likely it is for them to get away?"

 

With a disapproving sound, the Queen used magic to freeze the younger woman in place and literally teared the baby from its mother's tight grip. Little Emma fidgeted and cooed at her new-found freedom, rocking her small arms and legs and opening her pink little mouth with a yawn. It was almost hard for the Queen to hold such an energetic bundle without letting it fall, but instead of tightening her grip as Snow had done, the Queen simply supported the baby against her chest, curiously looking down to the living manifestation of the love between Snow and Charming.

 

 

With less than an hour of life, the baby looked like most newborns, all grayish and wrinkled skin. With a patch of weirdly blond hair and very pink lips, though, it reminded the Queen very little of its parents. A very well manicured finger traced a smooth path over the infant's soft skin and hair, stopping next to its mouth, where said lips latched almost immediately on the finger and started sucking, hungry. The Queen suspected the baby had not been fed for the first time yet, and with a foreign pang of worry, the Queen conjured a nursing bottle filled with warm goat milk and rubbed its nozzle over the baby's mouth, who began nursing immediately. A flow of warmth filled the Queen's dimmed heart while she watched the baby feed, and with one look at frozen Snow and the roar of the Curse getting closer and closer, the Queen made a decision.

 

"It seems like David is not the only Charming who is going to die today" and at the despaired and pleading look on Snow's eyes, the Queen relished her sick pleasure once again "Calm down Snow, I am not going to murder your little princess. Oh, no..." the Queen said in a purr, rocking the baby softly in her arms. "Little Emma is going to live. Yes, yes she will" She reassured the baby smoothly, talking directly to her as she opened her eyes for the first time. Big, green eyes, that may or may not change over time "She is going to live for a very, very long time" the Queen mused, out loud. "I may find a way to make her age a little bit, I wouldn't want to be responsible for a newborn for all eternity" turning to Snow as if the woman were capable of displaying a reaction beyond the tears leaking her still eyes "somewhere between six and eight years. I've heard it's a delightful age, in which the child is old enough to care for themselves to a point but still young enough to be dependent upon their caretaker and completely loving of them. Oh, yes Snow. Emma is not dying today, but another Charming is. For, from this moment on, she is _my_ daughter, and not yours anymore."

 

And, as the baby finished her first meal and her new mother vanished the bottle with an unconcerned flick of her fingers, the purple mist of the Curse finally reached the inside of the tower where the Queen sealed hers and all of the others inhabitants of the realm fates. Encompassing its residents and the bodies littering the floors, the magic wind blew and blew, until the world as they all knew it was vanished, and all of them but two were forced into an existence of pure and unrelenting misery. For all eternity. Or, maybe, for 28 years...

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first fanfiction in English and my first fanfiction here, so, don't be too harsh. But, please, leave reviews, I would really, really appreciate any kind of response.
> 
> I just always wanted to know how Regina would react to meeting Emma for the first time in this setting, and this is my take on how it could go.
> 
> Hope you liked it :)


	2. Purest Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea where this is going... Well, I wanted to write more before posting, but I decided to just go with it before I could start over-thinking things. And this does feel complete to me.
> 
> Hope you enjoy it.

 

As soon as Regina landed on Storybrooke, her new kingdom, she discovered her magic was gone. It rendered her panicked for a sliver of a second, but with a deep breath and a count to ten, she opened her eyes to her new reality.

 

She knew there was _some_ magic left in this new realm. Like an encyclopedia, new knowledge had been added to her brain in neat, accessible slots. She supposed it should make her feel invaded in a way, but as a collateral effect of the curse she cast herself, it only gave her a vague sense of necessity. It was also very useful: she knew most potions she could brew would still work in this realm, as would fairy dust – if she could find any – and the hearts, organized and safely kept inside her family tomb, under her father's coffin. She knew it was Saturday. She also knew what a television was, knew about telephones, about cars and motorcycles, had in her mind a brief but accurate version of this world's known history. Knew even the name and some of the songs of famous bands and artists, and also movies, books and art in general.

 

She laid on her new bed for a few moments, thinking, digesting all this new knowledge and trying to calm her still thudding heart by taking deep, full breaths. Then, a soft cry was heard over the blood running in her ears and Regina was up in a second, putting her silky blue robe on and padding with bare feet towards the room beside hers which she knew to be the nursery. Little Emma's room.

 

She was glad, but unsurprised, to find that the room was decorated with soft tones of cream and yellow, as opposed to the traditional pink or blue, depending on the gender. It also wasn't over crowded with furniture: a dresser with a changing pad, two white shelves with a few toys and baby products, the crib with a mobile over it and a comfortable looking rocking chair.

 

As Regina got closer to the crib, baby Emma started crying full on, and she hurried, making shushing noises to try to calm the baby down as she took her in her arms and rocked softly. For Regina's relief, Emma stopped crying, but her mist and unhappy little eyes warned the brunette she would restart at any moment. The former Queen searched her own brain for a moment, wondering what could be making the little princess so unhappy, but as a foul smell hit her, she had a pretty good idea as to what it could be.

 

Regina was slightly surprised to find she didn't mind tending to Emma at all. She knew it would be her responsibility as Emma's caretaker, but she thought she would find it much worse than she actually did. Using her extensive new knowledge about this world, she took a few clumsy tries and an awkward looking disposable diaper before she got it right. She wondered about the curse having clothed her and Emma as she threw away the used diaper and refastened the baby's onesie.

 

Collecting Emma from the changer, the new Mayor decided she would take a stroll through her new town and take a first, true look at it. She didn't hurry, though, taking her time to go through her wardrobe while her little princess napped peacefully on the bed, and applying with stead and sure hands a carefully considered layer of makeup, only enough to highlight her eyes and lips. Then, with a last look on the mirror she collected the items she would need to take with her for Emma: two baby blankets, some clothes, everything she would need to change her, formula... By the time she was finished, the bag she was using to carry those things was almost bursting, but with a little effort Regina was able to close it and deposit it under the stroller. Finally, ready, she left the house.

 

As the Mayor, her house was close to the town square - where the City Hall was - and the main avenue, so even on foot she took only about fifteen minutes to reach Granny's diner. Red, or better even, _Ruby_ was putting up the sign of the day's breakfast special, which was blueberry pancakes and tea. Through the glass windows, she could see a few of the city citizens were already inside, some looking tired, sleepy and annoyed, none with even a glimmer of sincere happiness on their features. Except for Jiminy Cricket, or Doctor Hopper, who passed and threw a too excited good morning her way, Regina shared a secret smile with the baby directly in front of her, now awake and staring at the Mayor with huge curious eyes.

 

A little bell rang as Regina entered the diner. She managed to look regal even as she sat on a corner booth and dismantled the upper part of the stroller, resting it with Emma inside on top of the table, responding with a small self-satisfied smirk and a nod the “good morning”s thrown her way.

 

Ruby came almost immediately and took her order before scurrying away with an anxious expression. Regina was pretty sure she made the waitress nervous, but if it was an effect of subconscious memories of the other life or a misplaced crush, she had no idea. Either way, it amused her to no end.

 

Her malicious smirk became a soft smile though, when she found Emma still awake and still looking intently at her. Her heart fluttering with a warm sensation, she took one of the baby's hands and kissed it, softly murmuring to her.

 

“This is our town, Emma. Our happy place, only ours.” For a moment, the Queen was practically glowing with happiness. “I finally won, and when I find a way to lift the curse from you so you can get a little older, and I won't take long to, I promise, we will be happy ever after. My Happy Ending, Emma, our Happy Ending.” She smiled, the baby fidgeted a little bit before falling asleep again, but the warmth on the cold Queen's heart didn't go away, even when she let the little hand go and focused on her breakfast and on thinking about the present issue.

 

______

 

Regina took a little more than two days to think of a solution. She knew her options were restricted to potions or hearts, since these were the only forms of magic she had access to, and as she poured over her magic books inside her father's tomb, the answer came to her as if with the wind outside. This curse was hers, the key word being _her_ _s_ _,_ theoretically, she should be able to control it just as she had power over it's citizens. How would she tell a curse, though, that she wanted it to spare one of the cursed, was a problem.

 

She had an idea, but it made her very uncomfortable. Maybe, just maybe, she could take Emma's heart and command it to not be cursed. It seemed silly in her own mind, but something told her it would work. For some reason, though, the notion of taking the little heart out of Emma's body made her skin crawl. She kept telling herself that she, for once, had good intentions with it, but it did little to appease her discomfort when she finally gathered the courage to do so. In her mind, she kept repeating “ _it's for a good reason, I am not going to hurt her, I couldn't hurt her, ever. It's for a good reason...”_ while she did it and surprisingly, it helped.

 

However, she was shocked when she took the little heart and looked at it. It was nothing like the hearts she had taken before. It was very small, soft and fragile looking, but what struck her the most was the fact it was completely _gold._ Not a light red, as the purest hearts Regina had ever taken were, nor it had the soft glow the brave and just hearts did. It was simply glowing, like a small piece of the shiniest gold Regina had ever seen, a literal source of light.

 

The Queen had the distinct feeling of holding something endlessly precious. She knew it was, rationally and emotionally, but there was just something _more_. After the shock abated slightly, she convinced herself that all babies hearts looked like this. Despite all horrors she had ever done, this was the first time she ever took the heart of a child, and it wasn't hard for her to assure herself that a _gold, glowing_ heart was probably normal for such young children, since they were the most innocent human beings existent.

 

Her hands still shook, though, when she brought the organ next to her mouth and whispered to it. _“Be free of the curse I shed upon you”_ She said, the breeze typical of curses breaking hummed softly, not quite there, and it told Regina her plan had worked. With a very careful and almost reverent touch, she immediately returned the heart to her slumbering child, and let relief wash away her trepidation.

 

“Now, my little princess, we can start our happily ever after. Forever.” the Queen smiled to her companion, who was awaking after a short nap and just blinked at the woman looking at her. Regina smiled.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would really appreciate kudos and reviews. Tell me what you want and what you think I could do with this, since I myself don't really know. I am a SwanQueen shipper and I wrote the first chapter just as a curiosity, so, now I am lost. Lucky me, I seem to be good at writing things when I have no idea what I am doing (well, at least this is what I was told when I wrote in another site, in another language)... But suggestions are always welcome!


	3. Happiness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy :)

 

It was two weeks after freeing little Emma from the curse that Regina stumbled upon the quilt with her name sewed on it, probably knitted by Snow herself while pregnant and dreaming of being able to raise her child, even if alone and in another realm.

 

It was in the last drawer of the dresser inside the nursery, buried under clothes for older babies, most still way too big for newborn Emma. The Mayor found it during her almost despaired search for clean baby clothes, since her little princess seemed to have the special talent of being able to smudge, soil and stain all her garments when she didn't even know how to smile yet. 

 

Even being a part of a rather recent event, the little piece of cloth did bring back memories, and, distracted from her search, Regina softly ran her fingers over the inscription with Emma's name on it, felling the texture of the material and thinking about the last time she saw it. For the first time it occurred to her that she could change Emma's name for something of her own choosing, but as she turned to the crib where the infant was and carefully searched her little features for some signal as to what else she should be called, Regina was uncertain of what to do.

 

On one side, keeping the name Snow gave her child would be an uncharacteristically lenient course of action, granting a small but important wish to her sworn, worst enemy. On the other, as Regina looked at the soft, small and delicate features of the baby, she couldn't imagine calling her anything but Emma. The name was ingrained on her brain, and the association with the little princess was so strong that the Queen couldn't see any other having or expressing the same power. The soft patch of blond hair, the small, thin lips, the huge, green eyes, it all screamed “Emma” inside her head, and, whatever desire she had to not grant even this small leniency to Snow, Regina didn't see how to avoid it.

 

With a tired sigh after a lot of sleepless nights and days trying to juggle the minimal load of work she had to do as Mayor with taking care of her newborn, Regina shoved the quilt inside the drawer, noting to herself to take care of it later, and started going through the dresser again, in the vain hope she had missed the perfect, clean clothe.

 

 

_ _ _ _

 

 

After a couple of weeks dealing with her responsibilities as a Mayor added to her responsibilities as a mother, Regina would be proud to say that she had it pretty much figured out and concentrated into a fixed routine, but she would be lying.

 

Taking care of a seven pound human being was the hardest, most time consuming thing Regina had ever done. And, she did study magic with Rumpelstiltskin for years. Her sleep deprivation was such after only a few days that she found herself dozing over her desk while trying to do her work more than once, going so far as to droll over her papers. And, as mortified as she was by her own slack caused by exhaustion, she still found herself jumping awake at the smallest cry heard from the general direction of Emma and rushing to her side, terrified that the infant had come to any kind of distress while she was away, only to find her perfectly fine and frequently already sleeping again.

 

Regina knew she was being overbearing, behaving like a pathetic new mother and being almost physically incapable of separating herself from her young, but she couldn't help it. Maybe it was a side effect of the warm feeling of love and satisfaction she got from taking care of Emma, maybe it was only her maternal instincts surfacing to their fullest, but the Mayor could not bear thinking that anything could or would happen to Emma, and as she had no magic to prevent it in this realm, all that was left to her was being overprotective and hypersensitive towards her little princess. And it was driving her insane.

 

But, one thing Regina was incredibly proud of about herself was her ability to reign over her own emotions. So, with time and practice she learned to not twitch at every noise nor jump at every cry. By the time Emma had smiled for the first time – Regina was smiling, making faces and weird noises (something she would never, ever admit doing even under torture) at her while Emma did her usual routine of staring intently at the Mayor, when suddenly the corners of her little mouth lifted in what was clearly a smile. And she was only three weeks old, which meant she smiled much earlier than common (something that gave the Queen a weird sense of pride) – and was almost able to sit by herself (Regina was working very hard trying to teach her how to, but all books she read on the subject said 2 months and a half was way too early), Regina was finally able to say with sincerity that she was comfortable with her role and not as skittish anymore.

 

She still wasn't sleeping well: Emma seemed to be an insomniac herself, waking Regina up like a small, cute and ungodly clock at exactly one and four a.m. almost every night. But she was adapting, and she liked to think she was doing it surprisingly well.

 

And, as the Mayor watched Emma grow slowly but surely and exceed all those developmental milestones – most of them earlier than usual for most babies – the warm feeling she recognized as love colonized her shriveled heart every time she was close to, taking care of, or even just thinking about Emma. Seeing somebody who was, for the first time, truly hers to take care of, love and be loved by in the purest of ways, was the biggest solace generated from her cursed existence.

 

To witness all those little things: the first time she was sure Emma recognized her voice, the first smile Regina was given by her, her first babbles, the first time she was able to sit straight by herself, how her favorite staring spot was the Queen's face, the way the baby sometimes just seemed to understand Regina when she talked to her, even if rationally the Mayor knew she possibly couldn't. They were all like little, beautiful and priceless gems given to her. Those of which the brunette rejoiced with all her damaged heart, even if it sometimes seemed to ache like a physical pain from such intense, foreign emotions. So much that the Queen didn't even notice it started mending itself, slowly recovering it's color and fullness.

 

However, pretty soon one thing _was_ made clear to her. It was weird, really, and she took long to reach that level after so much time had passed and she could barely recognize the feeling anymore, but it still became obvious to her: she was happy. Truly, honestly, solidly _happy_.

 

Of course there were a few things missing: sometimes the Mayor wished adult company at night, eventually she desired to have someone to share this family she had created with, maybe someone to support her on her moments of doubt. But all those feelings were fleeting, and Regina was more than happy to enjoy the charmed life she found herself with.

 

Happiness, for the first time in a long while, was a reality for Regina. And even if she still hurt, even if sometimes she second guessed herself, even if the guilty for the death of her own father still ate at her, somehow, it was worth it. Being with Emma, seeing her little smiles and the way she sometimes clung to her even while asleep, how she was just such a happy baby, even if surrounded by cursed, sad people. She brought light, love and joy to Regina, as she did to seemingly every room she was in. And, to someone as battered and despaired as the Queen, something so beautiful and pure and real was completely worth every sacrifice. 

 


End file.
